Turkey’s armed forces are massed along the border with north-east Syria awaiting the order to invade. President Erdogan intends to use military force to establish a so-called ‘safe-zone’ 30km deep and 480km long (19 miles by 300 miles) inside Syria, on land that is home to over three-quarters of a million mainly Kurdish people. These people are to be killed or evicted from their towns and villages and replaced with over one million of the 3.5 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey. Such a plan, if carried out, will result in enormous violence and will drive the Middle East deeper into chaos and destruction. President Erdogan and his AKP-MHP government are a danger to us all.

Following a telephone conversation between US President Trump and Erdogan on 6 October the White House issued this statement: ‘Turkey will soon be moving forward with it long- planned operation in Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operations, and United States’ forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial “Caliphate”, will no longer be in the immediate area.’ President Erdogan understood that this was the signal from the US that he had asked for and long been preparing for, saying on 7 October: ‘We made a decision. We said, “One night we could come suddenly”. We continue with our determination…It is absolutely out of the question for us to further tolerate the threats from these terrorist groups.’

President Erdogan brands any manifestation of Kurdish political representation or aspiration to democratic rights as terrorism, be it in Turkey, Syria or elsewhere. The Kurdish people in Syria, their political representation in the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and their military defence in the form of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have made no threat or challenge to the territorial integrity of either Turkey or Syria. They have complied with US-led mechanisms to ensure that Turkey’s border is secure and in doing so have dismantled defences near to Turkey’s border. No military actions against Turkey have come from Rojava/north-east Syria. However, the Kurdish people, along with the different ethnic communities that live in the area that is now threatened, have insisted they have the right to defend themselves if they are attacked. An SDF spokesperson said, ‘We will not hesitate to turn any unprovoked attack by Turkey into an all-out war on the entire border to defend ourselves and our people.’ The PYD calls for ‘a democratic dialogue and negotiation process inclusive of all parties towards ending the civil war in [Syria]’ and points out that a Turkish military incursion with enforced demographic change are crimes against humanity according to international law.

In July 2012, the Kurdish people and others in Rojava rose up and established a democratic, gender equal, secular, ecological and non-sectarian administration with inter-ethnic cooperation. It became and remains a beacon of hope for the Middle East – a beacon that Turkey and others want to extinguish. In January 2018 the Turkish state and it auxiliaries attacked Afrin, the western-most canton of Rojava, and occupied it. Since then Afrin has been subject to terror and ethnic cleansing. Erdogan has spoken of his ambition to reclaim territories lost to the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. The attack on Afrin and an invasion of Rojava would be part of realising that ambition.

Under President Trump’s agreement with Erdogan, Turkey will take responsibility for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past few years. This is diabolical; it is well documented that the Turkish state has collaborated with and armed ISIS, and sought to use the jihadis against both Syrians and the Kurds. Some 11,000 SDF young men and women have been killed fighting ISIS. The Kurds and their allies are guarding thousands of ISIS captives, including about 2,500 from Europe and elsewhere and 10,000 and more from Iraq and Syria. Al Hol camp in north-east Syria holds approximately 70,000 people. There remain ISIS sleeper cells across the region. If Turkey invades, the ISIS captives will not be secure or detained. Senior former US and British national security professionals have recently warned of the threat of a resurgent ISIS. That threat, the threat to the peoples of the entire Middle East, and the threat of repetitions of atrocities like September 11, 2001 in the US, of the Madrid commuter rail system, of the Bataclan theatre in Paris, and the Manchester Arena, will become all the more real and apparent as a consequence of permitting a Turkish invasion.

The British, European and US governments must tell President Erdogan and Turkey clearly and with one voice, ‘No, you must not invade,’ and they must back this demand with real and immediate sanctions if Turkey continues its threats.

Genocides begin in the wilderness, far from prying eyes – in Ottoman Turkey as well as Nazi Germany

It’s time to kick Turkey out of NATO – former Reagan adviser

Time to Kick the Islamizing Turkey Out of NATO

Kurds gain support, perhaps invitation to Syrian talks

‘The Era of People Like You Is Over’: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectual

Why Boris Johnson is Even More Dangerous Than Trump

Noam Chomsky on co-signing Turkey’s ‘Academics for Peace’ appeal

Turkey’s Ilisu Dam is a war nature with catastrophic consequences

Is pacifism appropriate in today’s world?

Stop and search is discriminatory so why is it on the rise?

INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON ISIS in Rojava

Final Declaration of the International Forum on ISIS

ACTIONS, CAMPAIGNS

Safe Hasankeyf! Stop the filling of the Ilisu Dam!

Filling of Ilisu Dam has started! Join the resistance with the “Hasankeyf Watch”!

Trade unionists’ letter to the Home Secretary: Don’t Criminalise International Solidarity

Early Day Motion: TREATMENT OF KURDISH PEOPLE

CULUTRE, ARTS/EVENTS

Your Freedom and Mine

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NEWS

British revolutionaries in Syria say they will defy Home Office’s new terrorism laws

27 July 2019|The Telegraph

A group of self-styled British revolutionaries who travelled to Syria to help build a democratic society in the Kurdish north say they will defy new Government legislation which would see them prosecuted on terrorism charges. The Home Office revealed in May that it planned to designate northern Syria a “no-go area” and that British citizens would have 28 days to leave or face a 10-year prison sentence if they attempt to return to the UK.

Speaking to ANHA, Democratic Union Party (PYD) co-chair Shahoz Hesen drew attention to the Turkish state’s threats of invasion of Northern and Eastern Syria and the recent military deployment along the border. Hesen stressed that they are always opting for a solution to be reached through dialogue, but added that they will show great resistance against a possible invasion attack. Referring to the defeat of ISIS achieved by the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), Hesen said that the Turkish state is trying in every possible way to destroy the peace and security of the region.

One of the long-standing traditions of the British labour movement, the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival, had a theme of Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan this year. The festival started in the Tolpuddle town in Dorset, UK on Friday and concluded with a mass march and rally on Sunday. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was among the thousands of participants of the festival, who came from all around the UK to stay in tents they put up in the area.

The Rojava Revolution is celebrating its 8th year, with the “third way” strategy proposed by Ocalan, and has become a great hope for the peoples of the region. Every minute of the path of the revolution is filled with labor and a heavy price paid. Rojava was divided, robbed of its identity, had its children imprisoned for years, burned to death and murdered. Despite everything, the revolution on July 19, 2012 created a ray of hope for Kurds and all oppressed peoples and faiths.

The invading Turkish army’s jets have bombed the vicinity of the Martyr Rustem Cudi Camp, injuring two civilians. Sources in Maxmur say the invading Turkish army jets bombed the Maxmur camp, located in Southern Kurdistan. Sources say the vicinity of the camp was bombed and two civilians were injured. The two civilians were buried under falling earth due to the explosions. The wounded were removed and taken to the hospital by camp residents and are doing well.

Condemning the air strikes carried out by the occupying Turkish state on Martyr Rüstem Cudi Refugee Camp (Maxmur), the German Confederation of Kurdistan Communities (KON-MED) reminded that Turkish warplanes bombed civilian settlements that are under the United Nations (UN) protection. Both the Iraqi government and the Hewlêr government continued to remain silent against the attacks of the Turkish state, said KOM-DEM, urging people to protest before the UN representation.

Turkey has received the S-400 parts, and simultaneously started a military build-up at Rojava border. Turkey blackmailed the US to change course and gave Russia a message that they could disrupt US plans for the region to look for approval for buffer zone. The US government and NATO have protested, but Turkey received delivery of the first parts of the S-400 missile defense system. The same day, they started a military build-up along the Rojava border.

Under the pretence of targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Turkish military is attacking and invading the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. While this is not the first time that the Turkish state’s forces have struck the Kurdistan Region, this time the campaign of military aggression is larger in scale – this invasion demonstrates a more vicious intention, and its goals are terrifying and disastrous for the peoples of the region.

Doug Nicholls, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, has renewed calls for the release of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan at the Durham Miners Gala 2019 an event attended by 200,000 trade unionists, socialists and activists. “We should appreciate first today, those sisters and brothers who since we last met have been prepared to lay down their lives for our cause”, Nicholls said.

Eology activists in Hasankeyf, Turkey and the world protested the controversial Ilisu Dam on Sunday, responding to the call by the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive and the Mesopotamia Ecology Movement. This day of action was the continuation of the growing activities of the last months against the Ilisu Dam which is almost ready for the filling of its reservoir. With these latest actions in more than 25 places the participants requested the immediate stop of the mega dam which would also devastate the Tigris region along the Tigris also in Iraq.

David describes a personal encounter with the history, culture and struggle of the Kurds. The story begins back in the mid-1980s, when, having just left university, I moved from Manchester to London. Long before the Internet, the terrorism acts, the bans and the listings of proscribed organisations and all the restrictions on our civil rights and freedoms that we have been compelled to endure in recent years.

The head of the United Nations special probe into Islamic State crimes has called for trials like those at Nuremberg of Nazi leaders to ensure the jihadists’ victims are heard and their ideology “debunked.” For a year, British lawyer Karim Khan has traveled around Iraq with a team of almost 80 people to gather evidence and witness testimony for the U.N. body known as UNITAD. “It’s a mountain to climb”, the human rights specialist told AFP, as the investigative team works to analyze up to 12,000 bodies from more than 200 mass graves, 600,000 videos of ISIS crimes and 15,000 pages from the group’s bureaucracy.

When Ciwan Husen lost his left hand and eye at age 21 in the Kurdish fight against the Islamic State (IS) in northwest Syria, he knew his life would never be the same. In the months leading to his recovery, his efforts to overcome his physical disability and the psychological trauma of war led him to develop a talent he never knew he had: playing drums and cymbals.

Genocides begin in the wilderness, far from prying eyes – in Ottoman Turkey as well as Nazi Germany

25 July 2019|The Independent

New evidence tells a story of Armenian killings carried out in the provinces long before the ‘Medz Yeghern’ was thought to have begun. The Armenian Medz Yeghern (Great Crime) destroyed a million and a half souls. The Turks – and, alas, the Kurds – committed these crimes against humanity of the First World War. The Turks have never, to this day, accepted their responsibility. The Germans have. We still respectfully record how the Turks “hotly dispute” their genocide of the Armenians.

Bringing Turkey and its nascent democracy into NATO was always a bit of a stretch, but today it makes even less sense and Turkey should be expelled from the alliance, said an analysis for The American Conservative. Turkey has proven over the years to be politically unstable, with occasional military interference in governance, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, wrote on Wednesday.

Foreign and military policy needs to change along with circumstances. During the Cold War, it made sense for Washington to forge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and make Turkey a member. Today, an American-dominated NATO makes little sense, and Ankara’s membership even less so. Bringing in Turkey, which no one ever mistook for a liberal Western-style democracy, was always a bit of a stretch. That nation has proven over the years to be politically unstable, with occasional military interference in governing affairs.

Since the battles against the Islamic State (IS) in Baghouz ended in March, several factors have indicated the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in northeast Syria is garnering international political support. Previously, support to that region — known as Syrian Kurdistan or Rojava — from the international coalition against IS had been limited to military and security aspects. Now, diplomatic visits have increased in frequency, actually coming weekly in the past two months, Abdul Karim Omar, head of the region’s Foreign Relations Department, told Al-Monitor.

‘The Era of People Like You Is Over’: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectual

24 July 2019|The New York Times

For more than a century, one school of political science dominated the education of Turkey’s governing class — until the Erdogan regime set about destroying it. Ilhan Uzgel learned he had been fired while driving his Honda Civic from the village of Ayas to Ankara, after a visit to his ailing, elderly father. A little after midnight, one of his former research assistants called his cellphone. “Ilhan hocam,” the student said, using a Turkish honorific (“my teacher”) bestowed on educators. “Your name was on the list”.

Is the rise of Boris Johnson to be the next prime minister the product of a soft coup? Does Donald Trump’s racist demonisation of four non-white congress members prove him to be a “fascist” leader like Mussolini and Hitler? The two questions should be answered together because political developments in Britain tend to emulate those in the US, and vice versa, though the latter is less frequent.

In support of ‘Academics for Peace,’ more than a hundred academics, including Seyla Benhabib, Noam Chomsky, Nancy Fraser, Fredric Jameson, Steven Pinker, Michael Löwy, Wendy Brown, Bertell Ollman, Warren Montag and Saskia Sassen, have reported themselves to the Attorney General’s Office in Ankara. This action started with the court’s decision to sentence Noemi-Levy Aksu to 30 month of prison and the beginning of the trial of several notable artists and journalists, including Hrant Dink’s son, Arat Dink, for the same ‘offence’ of declaring their support for ‘Academics for Peace.’

Cultural and natural heritage are frequent casualties of war – often deliberately so. Sometimes, as in the predominantly Kurdish areas of south-east Turkey, the “war” may not be officially recognised as such, but that can make the cultural war even more intense.

This week the Guardian revealed that police attempts to tackle violent crime had brought about a sharp rise in the use of stop-and-search powers by some of England’s major forces. Boris Johnson, most likely to be Britain’s next prime minister, has said he wants to increase the powers further. Critics say stop-and-search powers disproportionately target black people and undermine community relations.

The Rojava Centre for Strategic Studies (NRLS) hosted the three-day International Forum on ISIS (Da’esh) which focused on security, social, economic, and legal issues currently facing the region as a result of the five-year war. International intellectuals, academics, and political experts from 15 different nations travelled to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to participate and hear from local military, civil society, and administration officials.

The International Forum On ISIS: Dimensions, challenges, and confrontation strategies, closed in Amude on Monday night. Three days of debates, discussions, testimonies and proposals, which brought together hundreds of people from all over the world. The Rojava Center for Strategic Studies (NRLS) invited more than 200 people, including politicians, researchers and representatives of civil society institutions from multiple countries.

The Turkish government has started filling the controversial Ilisu Dam Reservoir on the Tigris River in the Kurdish Southeast of Turkey. We call on all people and organizations to stand against this act of destruction. Join or visit the Hasankeyf Watch in the 12,000 year old town Hasankeyf.

Trade unionists’ letter to the Home Secretary: Don’t Criminalise International Solidarity

26 July 2019|Freedom for Ocalan

In a joint letter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel MP, senior trade union officials oppose any Home Office decision to make Kurdish-run North-East Syria a “designated area” under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019. Under such a designation, anyone visiting the region could face up to 10 years imprisonment, a fine or both. They urge the Homes Secretary “Don’t criminalise international solidarity.”

That this House expresses its grave concern at the Turkish state’s intensified aggression against the people and territory of northern Iraq/southern Kurdistan and military occupation of that region; condemns the use of Turkish warplanes to bomb and kill civilians in northern Iraq in violation of international law, human rights and the basic principles of sovereignty; and notes that the Turkish state does this with the aim of occupying Kurdish people’s lands, changing the demographics of those territories and the suppression of Kurdish identity and the Kurdish people’s aspiration for democratic representation.

An evening of poetry, music and film celebrating the resistance struggle of the Kurdish Freedom Movement on the occasion of the publication of “Freedom Poems for Ocalan” marking Abdullah Ocalan’s 70th birthday.

We call on the UN, its member states and all its institutions and agencies to fulfil their duties and take action to enforce the law by holding Turkey to account for its actions.

PEACE IN KURDISTAN

Statement, 23 July 2019Last Friday, it was reported that Turkey had launched air strikes on the Maxmur refugee camp, located in the Kurdish region of Iraq, over which the UN flag flies. This brutal military action targeted civilians but was met with total silence and utter inaction from the international community. This is an outrage as is the fact that the liberal media turned a collective blind eye. The lack of response from Iraq and the Kurdish regional authorities is equally an outrage. Continue reading “Defend Maxmur Camp from Turkish Aggression”→

With the 104th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on 24 April 2019, the world is once again reminded of the mass murder of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and the systematic denial of this crime by successive Turkish governments.

The Armenian Genocide entailed the methodical vilification and destruction of Armenian communities across the Ottoman Empire from Van and Erzurum to Rodosto (Tekirdag) and Edirne. With very few exceptions, over 3,000 Armenian communities were destroyed with the loss of one and a half million lives. The genocide of Assyrian and Greeks followed suit, until the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Continue reading “Turkey and the Armenian Genocide: A Genocide Committed, a Genocide Denied”→

“At the conclusion of the peace negotiations, an amnesty must follow for all crimes committed by both parties, both in Turkey and abroad. Only in this case Turkey could be exonerated from the obligation to ensure the punishment of those responsible for war crimes and against humanity determined by the PPT”
Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, Judgement, 24 May 2018